Being a considerate neighbor is a two-way arrangement, and this tenant found out the hard way that not everyone got that memo.

A first-floor resident with a balcony spent two years collecting her inconsiderate upstairs neighbor‘s fallen clothing, plastic bags, and assorted household items, bagging them up, and walking them back upstairs without complaint.

She told them to just knock if anything fell, but the thing is, her neighbors never knocked. They just waited weeks until she eventually made the trip herself.

So after yet another unpaid shift of being a glorified lost and found, she decided she’s done making the effort. And now her balcony is slowly getting filled with her neighbor’s stuff.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITA for not returning what my neighbors dropped in my house?

I (24F) live on the first floor of a small building.

All the first-floor apartments have an outdoor area, like a balcony.

It’s quite spacious, but it’s not very useful to me and just ends up being more space to clean.

The other apartments above mine don’t have a balcony.

Living in the building definitely has its issues.

I’ve been living here for three years, and for the past two years I’ve had an upstairs neighbor who makes a lot of noise all the time, but I genuinely don’t bother over it.

The real problem is that I constantly come home to find pieces of clothing, plastic bags, empty cans of cleaning product, and hangers on my balcony.

Since they have no balcony, my upstairs neighbor dries their clothes by hanging them near the window, and most probably the wind or themselves knock the clothes over into my apartment.

So at first, she kept a level head about it.

For the first few times, I was completely fine with it.

I picked them up, put them in a plastic bag, and went to their apartment to hand them over, telling them it was no problem and that whenever that happened they were free to knock on my door and ask for their things.

She happily gave her neighbors the benefit of the doubt.

I was expecting a couple of things from this.

First, that they would become more aware, if they weren’t already, that things were falling from their apartment into mine, and that they would be more careful when putting things near the window.

Second, that they would be the ones to make the move to retrieve the things that had fallen, and that it’s not my priority to gather them and deliver them back.

But unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

Well, nothing changed at all throughout these two years.

Every so often I come home to underwear, dishcloths, and trash bags on my balcony.

Usually I put them in a plastic bag and keep them here until the neighbor asks if they can come pick them up, but this always takes weeks for them to do it.

Eventually, she starts feeling like something needs to change.

I got tired of it.

I’ll no longer pick them up, I’ll let them lay on the floor, and I absolutely believe I have no responsibility in returning them.

It’s their belongings and they should be the ones to retrieve them and apologize.

Right?

She feels like her neighbors should just know better to avoid certain things.

At the same time, it bothers me so much to have a stranger’s underwear laying on my balcony — I would be mortified if I were them.

I don’t know what to do, or if I’m being an AH over nothing.

Now she’s conflicted about the whole thing.

I don’t know how to properly navigate this situation.

I got so frustrated at one point that I genuinely wanted to throw it away with my trash, but I didn’t, which I think was definitely the best decision.

AITA?

Some neighbors truly don’t care about anyone else but themselves.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about people who refuse to cut down more trees for their neighbor’s water view after already capitulating once.

Redditors chime in with their thoughts.

The first step is telling her neighbors how she actually feels.

Some people don’t have enough self-awareness to read between the lines.

This commenter fears the neighbors could even be doing this on purpose.

If it were this user, they’d just start throwing things away.

The neighborly thing to do when your belongings land on someone else’s property is to apologize and retrieve them promptly, but clearly these neighbors didn’t care about being civil.

This renter is pretty much only asking for the bare minimum, but even that seems like too complicated of a standard for these people.

At first, she was permissive to save face, but she’s starting to realize that being polite got her nowhere fast.

Not her stuff, not her problem.